Long term Drafts users - how have you been using Drafts?

[RichardC]

@ccoppin

whenever I paste something from drafts into an email it looks awful

What actions are you using for email?

[ccoppin]

I use markdown mail - it does some really odd things like it doesn’t respect certain return characters, for example:

Meeting Action Items:
[ ] 1
[ ] 2

Might look like this in the final output

Meeting Action Items: [ ] 1 [ ] 2

Bullets usually end up ok, with the exception that I need to fix any that need indents or outdents.

[ryanjamurphy]

I run into this issue in Markdown in other apps. Some markdown processors require a double space at the end of each line. Maybe Drafts is one of these?

[TheMarty]

Try this:

Meeting Action Items:
[ ] 1

[ ] 2

[ ] 3

And generally it is better to use actions and not just copy/paste Drafts can do really neat things with emails.

[RosemaryOrchard]

This is because in markdown line breaks either need two spaces at the end of the line before them or to be two line breaks.

Try running an action to clean up your line breaks for this when you’re done writing: https://actions.getdrafts.com/a/1VT

[RichardC]

The action I use for Spark

https://actions.getdrafts.com/a/1JR

See if there are any appropriate actions that will clean things up for you.

[memex]

oh, this is indeed timely. The line breaks thing was driving me nuts!

[JerryGeiger]

I use it with the built-in iPhone dictation feature to dictate long letters. (Dictation is amazingly accurate on the iPhone). I then email it to my secretary to format it and put into a formal letter.

[MacSparky]

For me it is all about text capture. I know Greg has added a lot of features to allow it to act as your “do everything” notes app but I still prefer to capture and act with drafts. Long term storage goes somewhere else.

[bocciaman]

@ccoppin

I keep trying to use drafts but the formatting is a big roadblock for me. I am a huge bullet / number guy and I know you can enter those in drafts but there is no support for indention that I can see and whenever I paste something from drafts into an email it looks awful.

That’s been my experience as well, drafts takes some work to make it work for you. For example, I wrote a blog post that was 3-4 paragraphs long in Drafts and then I tried to copy it to Evernote it pasted it as one big text block - very frustrating. Am I supposed to use the (p>/p>) syntax to divide any/all paragraphs?

[rkaplan]

@MacSparky

For me it is all about text capture.

But if your document will use formatting features not present in Drafts, then it adds an extra step to the process. Isn’t it a lot simpler to use Notes or some other software that lets you include the formatting when you create the document?

[Denny]

@rkaplan

But if your document will use formatting features not present in Drafts, then it adds an extra step to the process. Isn’t it a lot simpler to use Notes or some other software that lets you include the formatting when you create the document?

I start with Notes regardless of any expected formatting. I can start a new Note in Notes as quickly as I can with Drafts. I don’t see the benefit there. At most I have to type Command-N to get a new note. Add to that the many other added benefits of using Notes such as scanning, adding images, PDFs, sketches, easy to understand folder organization, fast searching of text and attached PDFs, etc., I determined Drafts isn’t something I actually use or need.

[KevinR]

One of the killer features, and I think one that is under appreciated, is the automatic archiving of the draft when you do something with it.

Keeps the inbox clean, minimizes the organizing to be done, but it’s always in the archive if you need it again for some reason.

Not a huge feature, but one of many that set it apart to me.

[memex]

@RosemaryOrchard

This is because in markdown line breaks either need two spaces at the end of the line before them or to be two line breaks.

this is the solution

[Eorlingur]

On Mac I edit in sublime, but the editor that comes with tex live is good as well. On Ios I use texpad. For collaborative writing I use git through the app working copy. That way I can write whenever and wherever I want and deliver to clients from a PC.

[ChrisEdwards]

Meeting notes.

I start with a shortcut on my home screen to check my calendar and add the details to my Draft.

Once the meeting is finished, any line starting with “- [ ]” goes into Omnifocus (I have a shortcut on my keyboard bar to add this character combination). I then add the Draft to Apple Notes using a Shortcut (as per a recent post I made asking for help).

My Draft is submitted using a keyboard shortcut on my iPad (CMD S) to run the above and archive.

I’m no expert and most of the above was combined using the help of the wonderful people here and on the Automators forum, plus a little Googling.

This is 99.9% of what I use Drafts for. I never use it to draft emails or other things - I tend to use the email app for that.

The benefit for me here is automatically taking actions from my meeting notes and adding them to my task manager. I can’t do that anywhere else.

[vacowboy]

Thanks for this forum post. I am new to Drafts and haven’t really used it that much. I am trying to figure out how to incorporate into my daily work flow.

I use Notes primarily because of native integration with the OS and because I can take handwritten notes easily.

Besides the use case of drafting delayed responses, I haven’t found a legitimate use case. Thoughts and suggestions are very welcome.

[vacowboy]

@ciaran

Don’t think of it as a note-taking/writing app like Notes/Ulysses/Bear/iAWriter. You can use Drafts with those apps if you like. But they all make it more difficult to get the words out of your head and into your phone or iPad. Drafts removes that friction, while still giving you the flexibility to send that text wherever you want after you’ve written it.

If it’s not your cup of tea, don’t worry. There are plenty of other apps out there that you can use. But there are plenty of us who have found real value in Drafts’ “write first, act on it later” approach.

Thanks. Will try it out and see how it works. This answers the questions I had about the app? Do you subscribe?

[ciaran]

Yes, I absolutely subscribe. I want to support continued development, and I like making custom actions.

[bocciaman]

Not if sending text to other apps requires additional work/formatting than you would have done to begin with.